The tips and thoughts of a writer with bits of noir and Old Time Radio thrown in

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I published my latest ebook about a week ago. I’ve already begun planning my next ebook. It will be at least a novella in length. It will be a Ocean’s Eleven-style steam punk thriller. Here is the plot:

In the late 1860s, ships in the English Channel are attacked at sunk by a mysterious ship in the night. Several navies have sent ships to investigate, but the found nothing. Most people are convinced the French are behind it. However, a mysterious American adventurer, named Tom Cavanaugh, isn’t so sure and he’s putting together a team to investigate.

First, I’m going to publish a short prequel entitled Fire in the Night so readers can get a taste of things to come. The full novel will follow. I’m not setting a deadline until the book is 90%+ done. I’ve come up with the chapter titles, so I’m good to go. I hope.

After several months of hard work, I’m proud to announce that the newest stories of Benny Cahill, PI are now available on Smashwords. Trouble is My Client contains FOUR new and never before seen Benny Cahill stories. These stories (Where There’s a Will, Now Hear This, Reach for It, and To the Moon) recall the days of Old Time Radio and the detective stories that formed a generation of Americans. From the Smashwords page:

Benny Cahill is back. After getting involved in a crooked horse race in Don’t Look a Gift Horse in the Mouth, the cynical and wise-cracking private detective returns in four never before published mysteries. These noir stories are inspired by the author’s love of Old Time Radio shows. This collection includes a foreword by Theresa Linden, author of Chasing Liberty.

Click the book cover below to go to the book’s Smashwords page. More ebook stores will be added soon. Don’t forget to rate and review after you have read it.

If you ever published an ebook or just looked into publishing an ebook, one of the biggest costs is the cover. I’ve seen prices as low as $40 and as high as $300+. You could make your own ebook cover, especially if you’re a graphic designer, but most people don’t have that skill.

Luckily, there is this great place called Fiverr, where you can get all kinds of stuff starting at $5. I got my last ebook cover from a seller named Angie. Check out here gig. She does terrific work. Also, check out everything that Fiverr have to offer.

The next Benny Cahill ebook now has a cover. Angie at Fiverr did a great job. If you need a book cover, check her out and tell her I sent you. The ebook is 85% done and on track for release in the early part of December.

I enjoy reading Elmore Leonard’s stories because they are tight and quick, they get right to the point without tons of filler. I came across these tips for Leonard and found them useful, so I am posting them here for your edification. Enjoy.

These are rules I’ve picked up along the way to help me remain invisible when I’m writing a book, to help me show rather than tell what’s taking place in the story. If you have a facility for language and imagery and the sound of your voice pleases you, invisibility is not what you are after, and you can skip the rules. Still, you might look them over.

1. Never open a book with weather.

If it’s only to create atmosphere, and not a character’s reaction to the weather, you don’t want to go on too long. The reader is apt to leaf ahead looking for people. There are exceptions. If you happen to be Barry Lopez, who has more ways to describe ice and snow than an Eskimo, you can do all the weather reporting you want.

2. Avoid prologues.

They can be annoying, especially a prologue following an introduction that comes after a foreword. But these are ordinarily found in nonfiction. A prologue in a novel is backstory, and you can drop it in anywhere you want. There is a prologue in John Steinbeck’s “Sweet Thursday,” but it’s O.K. because a character in the book makes the point of what my rules are all about. He says: “I like a lot of talk in a book and I don’t like to have nobody tell me what the guy that’s talking looks like. I want to figure out what he looks like from the way he talks. . . . figure out what the guy’s thinking from what he says. I like some description but not too much of that. . . . Sometimes I want a book to break loose with a bunch of hooptedoodle. . . . Spin up some pretty words maybe or sing a little song with language. That’s nice. But I wish it was set aside so I don’t have to read it. I don’t want hooptedoodle to get mixed up with the story.”

3. Never use a verb other than “said” to carry dialogue.

The line of dialogue belongs to the character; the verb is the writer sticking his nose in. But said is far less intrusive than grumbled, gasped, cautioned, lied. I once noticed Mary McCarthy ending a line of dialogue with “she asseverated,” and had to stop reading to get the dictionary.

4. Never use an adverb to modify the verb “said” . . .

. . . he admonished gravely. To use an adverb this way (or almost any way) is a mortal sin. The writer is now exposing himself in earnest, using a word that distracts and can interrupt the rhythm of the exchange. I have a character in one of my books tell how she used to write historical romances “full of rape and adverbs.”

5. Keep your exclamation points under control.

You are allowed no more than two or three per 100,000 words of prose. If you have the knack of playing with exclaimers the way Tom Wolfe does, you can throw them in by the handful.

6. Never use the words “suddenly” or “all hell broke loose.”

This rule doesn’t require an explanation. I have noticed that writers who use “suddenly” tend to exercise less control in the application of exclamation points.

7. Use regional dialect, patois, sparingly.

Once you start spelling words in dialogue phonetically and loading the page with apostrophes, you won’t be able to stop. Notice the way Annie Proulx captures the flavor of Wyoming voices in her book of short stories “Close Range.”

8. Avoid detailed descriptions of characters.

Which Steinbeck covered. In Ernest Hemingway’s “Hills Like White Elephants” what do the “American and the girl with him” look like? “She had taken off her hat and put it on the table.” That’s the only reference to a physical description in the story, and yet we see the couple and know them by their tones of voice, with not one adverb in sight.

9. Don’t go into great detail describing places and things.

Unless you’re Margaret Atwood and can paint scenes with language or write landscapes in the style of Jim Harrison. But even if you’re good at it, you don’t want descriptions that bring the action, the flow of the story, to a standstill.

And finally:

10. Try to leave out the part that readers tend to skip.

A rule that came to mind in 1983. Think of what you skip reading a novel: thick paragraphs of prose you can see have too many words in them. What the writer is doing, he’s writing, perpetrating hooptedoodle, perhaps taking another shot at the weather, or has gone into the character’s head, and the reader either knows what the guy’s thinking or doesn’t care. I’ll bet you don’t skip dialogue.

My most important rule is one that sums up the 10.

If it sounds like writing, I rewrite it.

Or, if proper usage gets in the way, it may have to go. I can’t allow what we learned in English composition to disrupt the sound and rhythm of the narrative. It’s my attempt to remain invisible, not distract the reader from the story with obvious writing. (Joseph Conrad said something about words getting in the way of what you want to say.)

If I write in scenes and always from the point of view of a particular character — the one whose view best brings the scene to life — I’m able to concentrate on the voices of the characters telling you who they are and how they feel about what they see and what’s going on, and I’m nowhere in sight.

What Steinbeck did in “Sweet Thursday” was title his chapters as an indication, though obscure, of what they cover. “Whom the Gods Love They Drive Nuts” is one, “Lousy Wednesday” another. The third chapter is titled “Hooptedoodle 1” and the 38th chapter “Hooptedoodle 2” as warnings to the reader, as if Steinbeck is saying: “Here’s where you’ll see me taking flights of fancy with my writing, and it won’t get in the way of the story. Skip them if you want.”

“Sweet Thursday” came out in 1954, when I was just beginning to be published, and I’ve never forgotten that prologue.

In Thursday’s post, I announced the release of a new Benny Cahill story on September 15. After some thought, I have decided to instead release of collection of three short stories to give readers a better deal. The Benny Cahill trilogy will be released on December 1, with pre-order starting two weeks earlier. I will keep you updated

I would also like to announce the release of another series of mysteries, the Father Benedict Granger series. These stories are based around Fr. Granger, who was a private detective earlier in life before becoming a man of the cloth. The first story will be release for free on September 5. A collection of stories will soon follow.

My ebook Don’t Look a Gift Horse in the Mouth is now free on all platforms, except Amazon. Unfortunately, I have been unable to find a way to find a way to make it free on Amazon. If you enjoy hard-boiled mysteries or detective shows from the golden age of radio, check it out. You can find it on Smashwords, Barnes and Noble, Kobo or iTunes. If you like it, feel free to review it.

On another note, I am working on the next installment of the Benny Cahill series. The working title for now is Where There’s a Will. I plan to release it on September 15th. Keep an eye on this blog for more announcements.

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Who Am I?

John Paul was born and raised in West Michigan. He discovered detective stories at an early age through the magic of Old Time Radio. Since then he has devoured hundreds of hours of radio shows (such as Sam Spade, Philip Marlowe, Boston Blackie, Richard Diamond and Yours Truly, Johnny Dollar) and mystery stories. With all this knowledge, he decided to take a crack at recreating those hard-boiled stories of yesteryear. Someday he plans to expand into scifi and westerns.

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If you would like to contact me, you can send an email to wohlschied (at) gmail.com